GSM telcos add 14.69 mn new users in Feb: COAI

NEW DELHI: GSM telecom operators added 14.69 million subscribers in February this year, taking the all-India GSM cellular subscriber base to 555.06 million users, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said on Thursday.

The GSM subscriber base stood at 540.37 million at the end of January 2011. The numbers, however, do not include additions by Tata Docomo, the GSM services of Tata Teleservices, and Reliance Telecom.

Bharti Airtel, the largest GSM player, added 3.20 million users in February, taking its total subscriber base to 158.99 million, data released by the COAI showed. It had 28.65% market share as of the end of the month, it added.

Vodafone Essar with a 23.59% market share notched up 3.55 million new subscribers during the reported month, the highest amongst all the service providers in the country.

Aditya Birla group firm Idea Cellular added 2.51 million users during the month to take its total user base to 86.80 million, while Aircel added 1.66 million customers to take its subscriber base to 53.50 million.

In addition, state-run telecom firms BSNL and MTNL added 1.50 million and 25,786 new users, respectively, taking their subscriber base to 85.09 million and 5.17 million, respectively.

Reliance Telecom had a subscriber base of 23.87 million at the end of January 2011.